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Pablo Neruda/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby A robot, Moby, is typing on a typewriter. He's on the top of a bunk bed. A boy, Tim, walks over to the bed. TIM: Hey, whatcha writing there? MOBY: Beep. TIM: Poetry, huh? Let me see. Tim reads Moby's poetry. TIM: I sing the body electric, literally!/ Nerves abuzz with charmed quark passion, My heart a tireless steel piston, My dreams a positronic trance. Um, it's really… Hey, speaking of poetry! Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, Who was Pablo Neruda? From, Hansel. TIM: Pablo Neruda was one of the most gifted and influential poets of the twentieth century. An image shows Pablo Neruda. TIM: He's best known for his love poems, but over a career spanning half a century, his style and focus kept changing. Moby jumps down from the top bunk bed and lands on the floor next to Tim. MOBY: Beep. TIM: He was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in 1904, in Parral, Chile. A map of South America shows Parral, Chile. TIM: His father worked for a railroad and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. An image shows Neruda's father standing near a train. TIM: But Ricardo wasn't interested in trains. He wanted to be a poet. When his father found out that a magazine had published his fourteen-year-old son's poems, he burned the writings. An image shows a hand holding a poem by Neftalí Ricardo Reyes. A hand lights a match and burns the page. TIM: From then on, Ricardo wrote under the pen name Pablo Neruda, taken from two of his heroes: French poet Paul Verlaine and Czech poet Jan Neruda. The names Paul Verlaine and Jan Neruda are shown. Paul and Neruda are highlighted. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Neruda published his first collection, Book of Twilights, when he was still in his teens. An image shows a book titled Book of Twilights. TIM: A year later, he published what would become his most popular collection, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Using the natural world as a metaphor for a doomed love affair, the poems were praised for their emotional honesty. Moby reads a book titled Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. MOBY: Beep. TIM: What? Let me see that. Tim takes the book from Moby and reads a page of it to himself. TIM: Yeah, it has some pretty racy descriptions. The, the poems shocked some readers. But the book appealed to a wide audience and has since sold millions of copies. An image shows a large stack of Neruda's books on a table in a library. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Actually no, even successful poets usually aren't very well paid. To make a living, Neruda took a job as an honorary diplomat, representing Chile in countries around the world, including Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, and Argentina. An image shows pictures of Neruda popping up on a world map in different countries. TIM: It wasn't a happy time for Neruda; he was intensely homesick and appalled by the treatment of natives in colonial Southeast Asia. An animation shows Neruda observing workers on a farm. He watches an Asian worker pulling a well-dressed man in a rickshaw. TIM: During this time, he wrote his next major work, Residence on Earth, a collection of surrealist poems. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Oh, surrealism is a school of art that focuses on subconscious ideas and the imagination. You can learn more about it in our Surrealism movie. An image shows three famous surrealist paintings. TIM: True to form, Neruda's surrealist poems are a dreamlike jumble of imagery from his travels in Asia. An image shows pieces of a statue on the ground. TIM: Residence on Earth was critically acclaimed, but Neruda still needed money so he accepted another diplomatic post, this time in Spain. It was there that he became politically active, when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. An image shows a map of Western Europe with Spain highlighted. An animation shows a fist and planes flying over Spain. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, it started when General Francisco Franco led Spain's army in an uprising against the government. An animation shows General Francisco Franco waving to a crowd. TIM: Franco wanted to establish a fascist government, with all power concentrated in a single dictator. An image shows a large, ominous face of Franco with a large amount of faceless human figures below him. TIM: Neruda vocally opposed Franco, especially after his friend and fellow poet Federico García Lorca was executed by fascist soldiers. An image shows Federico García Lorca. TIM: From this point on, Neruda's poetry, and his life, became more political. After returning to Chile, Neruda became a senator for the Communist Party. Images show a map of Chile, then Neruda sitting at a desk with the Communist hammer and sickle symbol behind him. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Communism is an economic and political system in which, ideally, wealth is divided equally between all citizens. An animation illustrates the equal division of wealth by showing how a pile of coins is equally divided among six smiling heads. TIM: After an anti-Communist government took control of Chile, though, Neruda and his wife were forced to flee to avoid arrest. An image shows Neruda and his wife riding horses in silhouette through a mountainous countryside. TIM: He spent the next few years traveling the world, and in 1950 he published what some consider his masterpiece: Canto General, a grouping of more than two hundred poems that explore the history of Latin America. Two years later, with a new government in power, Chile welcomed Neruda home as a hero. An image shows Neruda waving his arms in front of a large crowd. TIM: For the rest of his life, he was celebrated around the world and in his own country. He even won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Neruda died just two years later. Images show an older Neruda and the Nobel Peace Prize. Moby hands Tim a piece of paper. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Another poem? Tim reads the poem and mumbles. TIM: It's… It's… uh… Hey, what's that?! Tim points to something off-screen, then runs away and drops the poem.Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Social Studies Transcripts Category:BrainPOP English Transcripts